Thursday, February 19, 2009

There was a big hubabaloo last week over the Tennis Channel's decision to not air the Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships, because player Andy Ram was not given a Visa to enter the Country because of predjudgices towards the Israeli. Well a U.S. Rep said that Dubai has finally granted the player that entry, but the Tennis Channel doesn't seem to care. In fact, they are looking for some of Ram's best performances to air in the spot that the Tournament was supposed to be. Via the NY Times....

On Wednesday, Weiner said: “It was my sense from the ambassador that he was looking to do the right thing, but that’s small consolation to Miss Peer. He understood that they had made a mistake and they had a public relations problem.”

The decision to grant Ram a visa could not be independently confirmed with the U.A.E. embassy in Washington or by the ATP Tour.

Ken Solomon, the chairman and chief executive of the Tennis Channel, said the network was looking into its archive to find Peer’s best tournament performance to replay Feb. 28 or March 1, the dates of the men’s semifinals and final.

I'm not going to pretend to even delve into the Political aspects of this whole thing, but good for the Tennis Channel to stick up for what they believe in. The Wall Street Journal has also pulled sponsorship, and if I was Ram or Peer (a woman's player also banned), I would just skip the think entirely.

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Comments:

AA, I love you man, but you suck at spelling. "predjudgices"? I'll be honest, I didn't know the exact spelling, but trying it in google gave me this: prejudices. It seems like there should be a D before the J, but dictionary.com gives me the same thing.